During a summer in which pundits have repeatedly suggested audiences are nearing the point of reboot/remake fatigue, the prospect of hitting the reset button on a billion-dollar franchise feels even dicier than it ordinarily might — let alone doing it for the second time
in 15 years. But sometimes starting over is just what a flagging film series needs, and that definitely seems to be the case with this weekend’s
Spider-Man: Homecoming. After kicking off the training wheels on this latest big-screen iteration of Spidey with new star Tom Holland’s well-received introduction in
Captain America: Civil War, the classic character makes his full-length MCU debut here, in a story pitting Holland’s teenaged hero against the Vulture (Michael Keaton), a villain with an axe to grind against Spider-Man’s superhero advisor Iron Man (
Robert Downey, Jr.). For the most part, critics have liked the character’s previous solo outings, but
Homecoming comes close to setting a new bar for the franchise; enlivened by Holland’s appropriately youthful exuberance and balanced between costumed antics and John Hughes-style teen angst,
Homecoming takes
Spider-Man back to its fundamentals — emphasis on the “fun.”
